Fingerless Gloves (14 page)

The Hitch was the nickname given to an old hospital on the outlying part of town. Years ago, the hospital had been used for something. What that something was happened to be a major subject of debate. Some said it was for the mentally ill, others suggested it was a Tuberculosis hospital, closed after an outbreak. Really creative people said it was used strictly for strange government neurological experiments. No one in our town was older than the Hitch. It’s like the hospital had been there before people. Nevertheless, the labyrinth of rooms and wards and discarded beds, once you were old enough to brave it, was one of the most serene and eerie places in our entire state. The hill that the main buildings were carved into seemingly overlooked our whole town, from the high school to the distant city borders. You could see the high-rises and well beyond on a clear day. When you were up there, sitting on the root of one of those rotting, overgrown buildings, it was pure 9th-grade magic. I hadn’t been there since my senior year in high school, when I went there to smoke pot without having to worry about being bothered. I found out that there’s something about being high that ruins the whole Hitch experience. I remember my fear of heights, one fear that I thought I had gotten over, abruptly rushing back and overtaking my diluted nerves…returning seemingly out of nowhere.

Hitchfort Memorial Hospital was about 15 minutes, a dozen left-hand turns and a handful of straighaways, past the sign for the pancake house. The entrance was snaked around back roads and woods that were surprisingly close to civilization. I remember the few occasions after lunch at the pancake house when we’d make the trek, full of syrup and on our bikes, to Hitch Hospital. It was a whole uphill grind. The ride certainly didn’t serve my stocky frame well at all. I was never properly trained, by whoever trains young children in such matters, on a bicycle. I dropped the seat down as low as it could go and rode shoulders-back, sharply decreasing and ruining things like endurance and proper posture.

Beth, for some reason, still doesn’t trust my driving-while-high skill set, despite the fact that I see myself as more than trustworthy. I am, given my video game training that began with
Driver
and continued to
Grand Theft Auto
, completely adept at understanding the physics of handling an automobile. In my own car, with my own animalistic reflexes, I am unstoppable. During my senior year of high school, after a full year with my license, I began establishing myself as the designated high driver. I was looked at as the last resort to get us home…chilled out in the face of the police, safe regardless of the time of day. People seem to think that driving with your eyes half-closed, coughing your lungs out your back is a less than ideal situation. While I’m not a role model, sometimes that situation must be managed.

While I was driving, Beth must have been looking at me, studying me or watching to make sure I was still able to handle the responsibilities of an automobile. She said, with a vague hint of concern in her voice, “Your face is punched in. Do you know that? It’s pretty much your entire eye, cheek, ear…how can you even see the road?”

Until that moment, weirdly enough, I had forgotten about my meat-pounded face. I knew I was hurting, throbbing in fact…but I guess my body had become used to the pain, either that or my nerve endings were fried to pieces. I reached up and felt the numbing, puffy sting of the bruise that had taken up residence around my eye and over my cheek. It felt like a pillow filled with nails and barbed wire. Then I felt it…it was like electricity all over my face. My brain had been reminded, and I was back in pain. In my current state, I didn’t even bother to flip down the visor mirror and check myself out.

“I got punched in the face…at this party, someone pushed Nichole, and now my face is this way. You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever been punched in the face before. I know it happened, but the pain is just starting to hit its stride now that you mention it. I’m going to look like an asshole for weeks.”

I could tell Beth was impressed, even though she was doing her best not to let on. She gave a half smile and I took my eyes off the road, just for a second, to admire how the moving streetlights lit up a face I had known, but hadn’t really seen for years. The truth, as it began to dawn on me, was that I couldn’t exactly see where I was going. It was there, moving, yet the lines and the lights and the sidewalk seemed to be blurred, like looking through a cheap camera’s viewfinder. Between the pot and the bruise, my vision was severely impaired. I just kept trying to focus, on the fact that the punch hadn’t connected with my eye, on driving straight, and then taking turns like a normal human being, on not screwing up the silent tension building in the car. It was a good tension, like we were on our way to something. Riding shotgun on this trip was possibly the only girl I’d ever loved. I had to concentrate on not getting us both killed. It would be a tragic front-page story in our crappy local paper. Our old friends would read about it, and everyone would know that we were both still locals, not good enough to make it out in a life cut severely short. The thought was terrifying. Good thing the amount of cars on the road at 3:51am consisted of a passing truck, two taxis and a mysterious minivan. I had no idea how it had gotten to be almost four in the morning. We were into uncharted territory. The only characters out at this hour were lovers and criminals and, oddly enough, we were straddling that fine line.

The Hitch rose up off the side of the winding, unlit back road. The hospital was this imposing presence, even in the dark. The shadows came out of the ground to give a weird presence to something that was no longer serving any function at all. The string of buildings, old wards and patient quarters, plus dorms for the live-in staff, were spread out over a number of acres. The buildings deepest into the complex were not only too creepy to visit in the dark, but also too decrepit to make any use of in the light. They were rotting and stained, with their contents never cleared out. The walls were Sharpied and spray-painted with markings of those headstrong kids who explored there. The brave souls who ventured to those distant buildings (I was one of them many years ago) found broken hospital beds, desk chairs smashed and files littered and plastered all over the rotting floors. There were old photos, stuffed animals, surgical masks and other eerie trinkets left from forever ago. There was talk in the town of bringing in a demolition crew to level all those buildings in order to make way for brand-new stretches of housing. A contractor was called on to start the job and the news made it all the way to our town council meetings…testing the patience of not only residents, but also the zoning board. Details crept up, then details disappeared, and the job was never started. People argued that the hospital was an eyesore and a detriment to a town already declared to be too old. The Hitch remained a part of us that was never bought or sold, defying the negotiations of those who proposed to make it something it was never meant to be.

James Squire hated the Hitch. He never understood its value as a backdrop for important conversations or a safe haven for drinking, smoking, making out, or telling stories. When we were kids, still wide-eyed and terrified at the thought of Tuberculosis blood on the walls of the buildings and secret, underground tunnels connecting the entire complex together, James never biked there with us, even when we insisted he see how epic the view was from the side of the hill. When we got older, and we needed a place to finish off a flask, watch the lights below us, or sneak cigarettes or pot, James always suggested somewhere other than the Hitch. He preferred parking lots hidden from main roads, rickety playgrounds, or darkened side streets, even though the police constantly monitored most, if not all of these places. The Hitch, totally hidden from view and rarely patrolled by skittish law enforcement, was perfect…yet, there we’d be on some nights, drinking on the side of a well-traveled street. It was risky, not as epic, but we all respected James enough to let him have his nights. Maybe his feelings towards the Hitch had something to do with the long-gone patients or about not disturbing the grounds. I questioned James over and over to no avail. He just kept saying the same thing: “Anton, you know about The Hitch, man …it’s just not a place I want to be.”

Beth was still cold, even with the Escape’s heater knob turned all the way to the thick red markers on the right. I was having trouble breathing, with oxygen coming in shallow breaths… and she still had her hands balled into fists and jammed in her pockets. She used to steal covers, blankets, towels, all in the name of anemia. She was the worst person to hold hands with considering it felt like gripping an ice scraper on the coldest school morning of the year. Beth’s mother was, apparently, also anemic. During our first winter together, my earliest memories of spending time in her house also involve being awkwardly sweaty and uncomfortable. The cast iron heaters seemed to always be emitting an extreme amount of invisible heat. I imagined, underneath chipped, metal covers, those heaters were glowing like the inside of a toaster. I couldn’t fathom the monthly bill and how Beth’s father must have shouldered it without complaint.

There is a spot at the Hitch, when it’s too cold out to sit on top of one of the buildings, where we’d park our cars or bikes to look out over the hill. The view spans four towns and the city’s skyline. I’m not sure how that dirt clearing ended up being so perfect, or why there were no buildings ominously close, but that small patch of dirt, an inlet snaking away from the asphalt, was perfectly positioned to fit exactly one car. At 4am, most of the neighborhoods we would look out on were dark, with only sparse streetlamps lighting up and aiding drivers on the back roads. The highway span that cut through our town would be lit by 24-hour convenience stores and, somewhere out there, the pancake house and the arcade.

Rocks cracked and moved under the tires as I took the turn towards the clearing. The old hospital buildings slowly rolled by until the grounds opened up slightly and entire ridge seemed to be right in front of us. I pulled up gingerly so as to not drive right off the front of the ledge.

I remember the first time I saw that clearing…sucking wind on my bike, still too young for the idea of a car to be much more than a distant fantasy. I had fallen behind my group of more-athletic friends and was struggling to pedal deeper into the grounds and ever-creepier buildings. As my friends took a turn and faded from view, I saw the inlet. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect…the days were just starting to get longer again. As I dismounted my bike and stepped out to the edge, the swirling sky opened itself against the tree line. It was right in the middle of sunset, and the orange had begun to bleed into the blue backdrop. I stopped to look, but only for a few seconds. I never called my friends to come back. Eventually, they would discover it for themselves.

Beth flipped her wrist and, after some initial effort, opened the handle of vodka. The smell of liquor immediately permeated the car as she placed the cap on the seat, in between her legs. She said, “I imagine you don’t have anything to drink this out of.”

It was, to say the least, a minor oversight. The lack of anything close to a cup was to be expected. “We can share it out of the bottle if that isn’t too high school for you. Just wipe if off or something before you pass it to me.”

It hit me, over a few moments, how absurd that last statement was. Wipe it off? After a quick sip, Beth gave me a look and tucked her hand back into her sweatshirt pocket. Reluctantly, she wiped off the top of the bottle with her sleeve. She handed me the bottle. I knew I had hurt her feelings for some reason…not sure if it was what I said or my demeanor, or just the fact that I couldn’t stay sober to talk to her just this once. The liquor tasted the way liquor had always tasted to me, since my first drink. Needless to say, it was terrible…burning my lips and my throat and every corner and crevice down into my stomach. I could never shoot liquor the way I had seen it done in so many John Wayne movies. Instead, the entire beginning of my digestive system anticipated the burn and closed up, leaving the interior of my mouth to bear the brunt of the exchange. In return, I tended to have an awful, contorted shot face and a bad habit of snorting liquor out of my nose. I am not blessed with grace or cool in any sense, just a desire to feel fuzzy, weird, limitless next to a girl I shouldn’t care about anymore.

The bottle went back and forth between us over and over again. While my face tangled with every sip, Beth never actually looked at me when she took a drink. She’d turn towards the window or look straight at the roof of the car, then tilt the bottle up and bring it back down in time to face me. “You know, this tastes like shit. For how classy they make the label and the neck of this thing look, you’d think the contents would be smooth. This vodka is sharp as anything and it’s killing my throat.”

I couldn’t argue with her there. Although I had no concept of smooth liquor versus harsh liquor, I could tell this was particularly bad, which is unfortunate considering the elaborate packaging. To be honest, in the interest of ignorance, the only way I can tell the quality of a liquor is by the severity of the next day’s hangover. Her palate pertaining to booze, on the other hand, must have been refined throughout college. After she broke up with me I used to find myself thinking about all the other boys that must have been waiting for Beth Fallow to be single. I imagined some sick VJ-Day celebration with a bunch of assholes in tank tops and cargo shorts taking their disgusting intentions to the streets and yelling on the top of their pituitary-engorged lungs.

After taking a horrendous and off-balance swig, I held the bottle in my hand and said, “It’s not so bad once you drink it for a while. All I taste is straight up rubbing alcohol…like when my mom told me to gargle with it to clean out a canker sore. To come clean with you, I haven’t really tasted anything since the burrito.”

Beth looked at me with tired eyes, “Anton…you gargle Peroxide to clean out a cut…why the hell would you gargle rubbing alcohol for a canker sore? And if you could taste, you’d know this was shit…all of it.”

I looked out on the well-lit bridge leading into the city. The city that I didn’t quite work in …the city that seemed forever away. Every now and again, sets of two headlights would travel over, a lone illuminating force over a gigantic river, burning across the lanes…trying to get somewhere. Beth tilted the bottle up to her mouth and took a drink. This time, I watched her cringe. It wasn’t quite as bad as my shot face, but it was pretty damn close. The only sound other than the liquor splashing and bouncing off the glass was the steady drum of the car heater. This time, post shot-face, Beth drank a second time…then she looked right at me.

After a labored gulp she said, “Anton, how do you eat and not taste anything? You know, after you and I …well…split, I smoked pot in college. When I got high, I tasted everything, from pints of ice cream to oniony sliders. How does that happen to you? Don’t you enjoy anything?”

It hit me that I was a bit intoxicated, which only added to the high that had settled like a helmet over my brain. When I went to take the bottle from Beth, there was hardly anything left…just a small bit of vodka forming a ring around the bottom of the bottle. From the corner of my eye, 4:18am lit up green above the on-but-muted radio station number. I wanted to ask Beth the following rhetorical question: “You smoked after we broke up?” and then follow up her inevitable silence with, “You hypocritical bitch.” To save an argument and a fight I was sure to lose and saying things I know I’d end up regretting, I didn’t use those choice words that I had so carefully put together in my head. When we were together, I was the smoker and she was the girl who put up with my giggling…my eating and inability to form sentences…who dealt with James’ pontifications and musings. She held our conversations together the way only a sober girlfriend can.

And, at that moment, I had no answer for her…to justify why I “couldn’t enjoy anything.” I just said, “I’m enjoying this…and this is something. I’m enjoying this view and this liquor and this…”

I trailed off because the logical progression of that list of enjoyments would have led me down a dangerous path. The liquor was done, and the view was consumed. It was time to leave the Hitch behind us, where it remained as this beacon of something we used to love, but that had perhaps seen its magic fade out over the years. Beth Fallow sat two feet away from me, looking at me and waiting for me to finish the thought I had abruptly halted. I started feeling the throbbing in my face return more intensely than it had been. My cheek felt heavy and sore…and I noticed that it hurt to blink. I remembered that I had smoked enough pot to numb it temporarily, but that effect was quickly diminishing.

Beth was cold, unkempt and tipsy in a way that reminded me of bigger ideas…ideas that used to turn themselves into things called “comfort” and “trust” and other words I had only come to understand because I had chosen to spend my most formative years with her…this girl who was sitting right next to me. She was not terribly beautiful and when she chose to, she could have an elegantly raunchy way of saying things. Yet, I was always attracted to her. I always wanted her, both when I could have her and when I couldn’t. There were scars on her, remnants of Chicken Pox…she had moles and broken-out skin. She was a decent student and a terribly picky eater…a sometimes-downer at parties and prone to bad moods. There were plenty of nights ruined by our disagreements. She never got over things easily. Beth Fallow was perfect in this backwards way, and I knew it was time to take her home, not for the sake of ending a moment, but for the sake of not tripping up and doing something stupid or something that would strain an already stretched-thin friendship. Tonight was ending for us. We didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I said, “…This, um, lumbar support button on my power seat. I feel like my posture is lifted and my back is realigned…like for the first time ever, I’m super flexible. I’m enjoying that, you know, that part of the seat. I have never stood up or sat down straight and my posture is awful. You know this.”

In the odd glow in the car, I saw her eyes deflate. She said, “Anton, you’re just high. Your posture has always been fine. Where do you get this stuff? You’re far from scoliosis.”